1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to feature and pattern recognition in images and image classification.
2. Description of the Related Art
The automated determination of features in an image has myriad applications, from sorting and searching images at a website or database to monitoring security cameras and sending alarms. However, many current approaches are unreliable or computer intensive and cumbersome using available computational hardware.
A recent approach has obtained significant improvement in object categorization accuracy using a feed-forward, hierarchical architecture closely modeled on the human visual system (see, for example, T. Serre, T., Wolf, S. Bileschi, M. Riesenhuber and T. Poggio, “Robust Object Recognition with Cortex-Like Mechanisms,” IEEE Trans. PAMI, 29 (3) pp. 411-426, 2007, hereinafter Serre). However this approach suffers by requiring input of numerous ad-hoc parameters, marginally faster speeds, dependence on the size of objects relative to training sets, and degradation when multiple objects occupy the same image.